As a result of interest from members of the European members of parliament the Scientific and Technological Options Assessment Unit (STOA) of the Directorate-General for Research of the European Parliament commissioned a number of studies concerning "The Application of Multimedia Technologies in School: their use, effect and implications". Recently these studies were presented to the European Parliament.
One of the studies focused on "Multimedia in Education: The transition from primary to secondary schools" The other two studies focus on "Technology Assessment of Multimedia Systems for pre-primary and primary schools" and "Using Multimedia in Pre-primary and Primary Education: Scientific Approaches to New Learning Models for New Learning Environments"
Each study presented European policy makers with options for them to consider. The following key options were presented in the study "Multimedia in Education: The transition from primary to secondary schools"
A major issue in technology assessment across EU schools is the lack of comprehensive data across the whole of the European Union and other major areas of the world to enable comparisons to be made easily. Therefore it is strongly suggested that a European observatory for collecting data on the number, type, and use of multimedia technologies is urgently needed in order to enable schools and administrative regions to compare themselves with others – benchmarking.
All students go through a transition period from childhood to adolescence. In most regions of Europe students actually transfer from a primary (elementary) to a secondary school. This tends to result in students changing from having just one teacher to having many teachers. This discontinuity is often marked by a different style of teaching, which can result in a decreased rate of learning.
There is an urgent need for further studies to assess whether this potential "efficiency gap" does create a serious deficiency in a student’s learning. In addition further studies need to be conducted to assess and to highlight examples of good practice concerning the role of multimedia technologies in plugging this "gap".
The importance of continuing professional development (CPD) in achieving this cannot be underestimated. Encouraging the development of cross-phase project work between students and through continuous professional development of teachers to ensure continuity and progression between the primary and secondary phases in the use of multimedia technologies as tools to enhance learning.
At European level this can be encouraged through the funding of exemplar practices and raising awareness of the importance of long term continuous professional development. At national and regional and individual school level funding mechanisms are urgently needed to enable the right level of training to take place.
There is a need for developmental work with software producers in order to ensure the pedagogical quality of multimedia learning resources, their relevance for individual learning needs, and that appropriate cross phase systems are developed.
Because of the fragile and fragmented European market for educational multimedia software, studies leading to proactive awareness raising activities amongst software producers should be encouraged as part of the European Commission’s Educational Multimedia Software Task Force activities. This would encourage the production of "pedagogically sound" software leading to a higher demand, which could stimulate a more stable market.
There is a need to encourage innovative and sustainable ways for funding multimedia technologies in schools and to enable every teacher to have regular access to online multimedia systems for their own professional development.
At a European level this could be encouraged by bringing together IT, Telecom, multimedia hardware and software producers, network service providers with educational managers in the form of a think tank in order to share ideas and develop innovative approaches to tackle these issues.
In addition, there is a need to bring together examples of "good practice" in the form of case studies. In particular, innovative financial models need to be developed which enable schools to regularly update the multimedia technology systems.
There is a need to stimulate initiatives to enable the production and online publication of teacher-led high quality multimedia learning materials with the assistance of professional software developers. This has the potential to create not only a vast bank of learning materials, but also stimulate other teachers to utilise the resources for their own teaching purposes. Grassroots initiatives backed up with quality control systems could create the critical mass of multimedia learning resources required to enable large-scale usage.
This could be encouraged at European level through the European Commission’s Educational Multimedia Software initiative. However, it will also need to be encouraged at national and local levels in order to create the critical mass of learning resources and should involve teachers at both primary and secondary school levels working together to ensure progression and continuity through transfer and the transition of students.
This study was produced by pjb Associates, UK under a contract with the European Parliament.
The full report can be obtained from:
STOA
Directorate General for Research
European Parliament
Schuman 4/81
L-2929
Luxembourg
Tel: +352 4300 2511
Fax: +352 4300 2418
Email: rholdsworth@europarl.eu.int